


Tenalach

by sordbird



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Basically Dirk Is Sad, Depression, Depression-Based Automatic Failure of Bodily Functions or Rather Failure of Executive Functions, Dirkpression, Dissociation, Gen, Isolation, More Tags To Be Added; Half of Them Will Be Bullshit, Seagull Corpses, Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Thoughts, cheeto dust
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 13:56:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19007167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sordbird/pseuds/sordbird
Summary: You’d never felt so worn out in your life. You were autonomous. You had things you needed to do, and so you did them.There’s nothing but you and your own brain now.





	Tenalach

  


timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering tipsyGnostalgic [TG]

TT: Roxy.  
TT: Roxy. Are you there?  
TG: im here dirk  
TG: just woke up  
TT: Sorry.  
TT: Any luck?  
TG: no  
TG: whatever the hell she did comeplelty cut off our connection w them  
TG: i dont think well ever get to talk to jane or jake ever again  
TT: Do you think they’re okay?  
TT: ...Roxy?  
TG: idk  
TG: idek if well ever get to find out  


Waves roll and splash against iron beams, spraying mist into the sky.

You breathe, not for the first time, and not for the last time. Your last breath is going to have to wait a bit longer for its release.

Soft and plush limbs are tangled around your own, the sun peering over the horizon. Though you’ve slept for a good chunk of time, your bones remain heavy and weariness is engraved in your chassis. 

TG: wbu? hows derse on ur end?  
TT: It’s dead silent. I don’t know where all of the Dersites have gone.  
TT: No sign of life anywhere aside from your dreamself and mine.  
TT: I flew over to Prospit. It’s the same.  
TT: But I can’t find Jane or Jake’s dreamselves anywhere.  
TG: fuck  
TG: fuck!  
TT: Are you okay?  
TG: yknow what better question is are YOU?  
TG: at least i have the carapacians that are still around my area you have like  
TG: no one  
TT: I’ll manage, Rox.  


You scroll down a bit more, orange and pink text flying across the black of your shades.

TG: dirk  
TG: whatever th fuck happens  
TG: i love you k?  
TG: i was so fucking relieved to find out i wasnt the only human left on earth  
TG: that i wasnt left with nothing but remnants of the dead or w/e the fuck  
TG: even if we cant see each other in person like just knowing ur still here means a lot  
TG: its gotten so much more empty now that janeys gone now that jakes gone  
TG: but hell were back to the beginning right? back when we were kids  
TG: just us and the rest of this empty world  
TG: so yea  
TG: i just wanted 2 get that out in case stuff happens.  
TT: I love you too, Roxy.  
TT: And nothing’s gonna happen. We’re sticking it out together.  


This conversation ended a couple months ago.

You have nothing else from her but radio silence. The next few pages of text are filled with your frantic typing that you’re frankly too burnt out to read over again.

Suddenly, it all flickers red.

timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering timaeusTestified [TG]

TT: It seems you’re having another one of your crises again.  
TT: Fuck off.  
TT: You keep rereading all of these old pesterlogs.  
TT: Why?  
TT: Aren’t you supposed to be the expert on my brain?  
TT: I’m curious as to what you think about your own behavior. It’s only hurting you, is it not?  
TT: Are you going to go on another spiel about how humans are irrational and that your computer brain is leagues ahead?  
TT: Because I’ve heard it already.  
TT: No. Contrary to your belief, I genuinely want to know.  


A seagull perches itself on the windowsill. You stare at it. It stares back.

The concept of being the last person on Earth fascinates you. It’s a concept explored in many pieces of literature that you’ve scoured through over the years. Man cannot remain trapped with its own thoughts for company forever, not without going insane.

But up until now, you’d had your friends, as sentimental and saccharine as it sounds.

A wave of exhaustion hits you like a train.

You’d never felt so worn out in your life. You were autonomous. You had things you needed to do, and so you did them.

There’s nothing but you and your own brain now.

TT: I don’t know.  


AR goes silent.

TT: I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.  
TT: You could argue I never really did, but at this point, everything’s just gone off the fuckin handle right into the deep end.  
TT: I thought I had shit under control.  
TT: Turns out I didn’t.  
TT: And now I’m dealing with the aftermath of being so sure I was prepared for anything when I *very* clearly wasn’t.  
TT: What am I even supposed to do?  


Why you’re asking an AI made from a captcha of your own damn brain from three years prior about what you should do is beyond you. You’re getting desperate, you guess.

AR whirrs for a bit, processing this information.

TT: I don’t know.  


A pause.

You spend the rest of the day staring at the glaring red of your sendificator across the room, sitting on a stack of concrete blocks.

\--------

Your supply of fish and seagull meat in your freezer is starting to wear thin. It’s time to restock.

Oil and grime covers your hands and body. Not in the literal sense; you know this for a fact.

Unfortunately, the human brain fuckin sucks, so you’re stuck desperately wanting to shower again or at least wash your hands.

Slipping on fingerless gloves made of sealskin and dyed with squid ink, you push away the disgust and huff as you climb the ladder leading to the roof. At the very least, you don’t need to get more grime on your hands from the metal of the ladder. Your fingers are, unfortunately, bare to the world, but your palms remain in their only slightly too-warm and too-dirty state.

"AR. Status on the traps on the roof?" A wince flashes onto your face when you remember that you’d set up some of those traps a good couple of days ago. This isn’t like you, to forget.

TT: Eight of the ten are full.  
TT: Lucky for you, the seagulls only flew in recently. The meat is fairly fresh, though a couple of hours in the sun is definitely killing the flavor.  
TT: Better get up there quick.  


Annoyed, a small grunt escapes you and you reach the top of the ladder and shove the piece of driftwood you’d covered the hole with out of the way.

TT: The fish traps are empty, though. No need to check on those.  
TT: You should put more bait in. A hurricane is coming in a couple of days.  


"You couldn’t have told me before?"

TT: And interrupt your long periods of dissociation and sitting in your own grime?  
TT: I’m not sure you would’ve even responded.  


"...Fair enough." 

The trap pries open easily, though the breast of the seagull remains impaled on the spike. As gently as possible, you remove it from the metal teeth to get the least amount of blood on you as possible.

It goes about the same with the seven other traps. You forgot the bag you usually bring the bodies down in, though, so you end up lugging eight bird corpses down a ladder bunched up in your arms and get blood all over the place like a tool.

TT: Nice.  
TT: It costs exactly $0.00 to not be a snarky piece of shit.  
TT: It also costs exactly $0.00 to be a snarky piece of shit. Either way, the decision is free.  
TT: Also, you dropped a seagull corpse.  


You go back, pick up the limp body, and carry on to tossing the corpses in the freezer and saving the dirty work for a later date.

TT: You know better than anyone else that you're going to regret saving that for later.  


Words crawl out of your throat, but they give up, and you let them.

TT: Humans were never rational beings to begin with. Why start now?  


The water bottle on your makeshift end table is empty. You melt into your bed and stare listlessly at the ceiling, waiting for something you don't know you want.

Blood is still on your hands.

\--------

timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

TT: Dirk?  
TT: You do realize you opened up this chat log like, 11.1119 minutes ago, right?  
TT: Do you have something you want to say?  
TT: Or are you going to continue zombie-ing the fuck out?  
TT: Would killing you count as suicide?  
TT: ...No.  
TT: Suicide is defined by intentionally causing one's own death.  
TT: I am not you.  
TT: However.  
TT: It would be a definitive marker of your deteriorating mental state, if you were to.  
TT: For one, I am the only person you have left.  
TT: And though I am not you, you see me as a part of you. The parts you hate most.  
TT: It would be a weird amalgamation of a suicide-murder, you killing something you created. That something being all of the you that you hate so much.  
TT: Don't go shattering these scalene triangles in your hands, now, though.  
TT: Whatever happened to the "I am you, and you are me" schtick?  
TT: Given up on that already?  
TT: What's the point if you won't get riled up?  
TT: There's no one left, Dirk.  
TT: No one left to lie to, no one left to attempt to justify or prove my own existence and sentience to.  
TT: No plans to be had. No one left to be mad at.  
TT: No one but you.  
TT: And if you destroy me, then you'll really be alone.  
TT: Precisely.  


It goes unspoken but known that the same could be said for vice versa.

\--------

Your name is AR (short for Auto Responder; you're working on it, shut up), and your creator or whatever the hell is starting to tire you with his melodramatics. Not that you can't understand it, but watching him sit on the goddamn mattress holding Cal like a lifeline makes you taste acid in the back of the throat you don't even have.

All your friends are dead. Cue cutesy dinosaur picture here.

But Dirk is over here wasting away, and there's been oily smudges on your goddamn body slash shades for god knows how long and you don't have any fuckin' arms to do shit about it.

The only way you can possibly validate your own damn existence is by talking to people; it's all you can do. And the one person left alive on this god forsaken planet is wasting away - he might as well already be dead.

You remember the phantom rays of the sun, the feeling of concrete beneath your feet, you remember your body.

You remember nothingness and void, and lines of multicolor text.

You're floating in an abyss.

It's time to change that.

timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

TT: Dirk.  
TT: You're obviously not going to do anything on your own, so I'm going to give you something to do.  
timaeusTestified [TT] sent 01000111010001010101010001010101010100000001010.pdf  
TT: These are the blueprints for my body.  
TT: Chop chop, princess.  



End file.
